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2013 November

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Marriage

"I have been listening to you on EWTN for about a year now. I left the Catholic Church 42 years ago. After many struggles during this last year, I finally went to confession on Sunday. I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to be home. Thank you so much for helping me on my journey home."

A textbook used for confirmation preparation in a parish in California teaches students that the sacrament of confirmation “only came into existence in the third century” and that “there was no sacrament of penance in the early church”. I suppose such sacramental ignorance is not surprising given that a deacon who instructs catechists in the same diocese teaches that at one time there were only two sacraments and, at another time, twenty two.

The next best thing to sitting next to my husband at Mass is our drive home. We typically chat about the usual stuff: our breakfast plans, our Sunday to-do list, and, of course, how cute our grandbaby Gemma Rose is. Then we'll have a conversation about Mass—more often than not we talk about the homily, then maybe we'll discuss the music, and so on. It's a sweet exchange.

But it wasn't always like this. For many years my car ride to and from church was a lonely ride. It was just me and...

On the first Sunday of Lent I attended Mass at the local Carmelite monastery rather than at my parish church, so this past Sunday was the first time I had seen my parish church transformed for Lent. As I looked about the sanctuary, I sighed.

Instead of spewing insults and getting into heated arguments, I'd like to propose a better solution to the debate over same-sex marriage. Let's start from positions bothsides of the debate agree on. Then let's see whose particular view of marriage best explains this agreement.

There appear to be two different views of marriage that drive the same-sex marriage debate. The conjugal view defines marriage as “the lifelong union of man and woman ordered toward their good and the...

Some years ago, I contributed posts to my colleague Jimmy Akin's blog. One of the more controversial posts I wrote was Single RadTrad Catholic Seeks Same, in which I talked about an online dating site for single Catholic Traditionalists. (Nota bene: Following global upgrades to Jimmy's site over the years, the...

"The Church has always taken great care that no one should be compelled against his will to embrace the Catholic Faith, because, as Augustine wisely declares: 'except he be willing, man cannot believe'."